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Thursday, August 8, 2013

Trying and Timing

When talking about video advertisement what immediately comes to our minds are ads on TV. So nothing more natural than the association with the TV, the biggest mass media of all times. There is no need of further explanation about ads as a marketing and branding tool on television: it’s known for decades an its efficiency talks by itself.

But since advertising and marketing and consequently, the whole world as we know it, migrated to the internet, we are still building an identity that is constantly progressing. The online world asks for this constant change, as it's changing all the time. And something that could be defined a couple of years ago, when the first online video ads start to be spread around, now have a totally different meaning, when we see the online video scenario progressing to incredible numbers. For example: Did you know that video will account for two-thirds of the world's mobile data traffic by 2016? Or that users spend 88% more time on websites that feature videos?

The digital world opened a world of possibilities for marketing and branding, renovating these two sciences and potentiating theirs results in a way no one could ever imagine. It is a complex world, indeed, but a world that allows one to be an expert in many fields: if a marketer thought he had to spend tons of budgets in production and edition to produce a good corporate movie, now with simple online tools, creativity, a little budget and the ability of turning content viral, the name of a company can be known worldwide in seconds.

Besides the obvious advantages , there are those that only the online world can provide for video. And this is not so obvious, since the offline universe could spread the message but couldn’t optimize it and potentiate all the benefits that video had already. The two main things that are widely improved are distribution and measurement: sites such as YouTube make them cheaper and easier to be achieved. If we decide to dive deeper into it, there are many other benefits but these four cannot be ignored:

-Behavioral analytics: video hosting sites provide extensive viewer data that can give deep insight into the behavior of viewers who interact with the videos.

-Conversion: most of the biggest online retailers have publicly shared statistics showing that a posted video can increase the odds of a customer purchasing an item by as much as 35%.

-Efficiency: Software developers continually find new ways to integrate sites so that video messages can be easily shared and broadcast via social media networking. Social video, remember?

-Search engine optimization: Bing, Google, Yahoo!, and other Internet search sites have made video a key factor in their search formulas. Posting an abundance of video on your website can move you higher in the search rankings — broadcasting your marketing messages to an even larger potential audience.

Ok, these are the online benefits. But sometimes the obvious is not so clear. Let’s start from the beginning: we live in the culture of the “fast and the furious”: the amount of information our brains are obliged to absorb everyday and the little time we have for that force us to find easier ways to have access to all the information we need (and want) to absorb. Here is the first positive point of videos – they are easier to grasp than other online content available. Remember most people are visually oriented.

Now, consider the following facts: the average person speaks at a rate of about 150 to 160 words per minute (WPM), which is half of this page. People read a little faster, at a typical rate of 250 to 300 WPM. That isn’t much space to convey large amounts of information about a company, or to describe a product or service in detail, for example. If the adage is true and a picture is truly worth a thousand words (I truly believe that it is), imagine the sheer volume of information that video can communicate. A simple 2- or -3-second video image can transmit tons of historical, emotional, and academic information simply from the imagery portrayed in the shot. Power in moving image.

If that wasn’t enough convincing, there is still the whole emotional approach: video offers the opportunity to use sight and sound to connect emotionally with viewers via storytelling. Unlike reading material, video content communicates passively – the viewer simply watches and lets the story unfold. Outstanding video entertains and influences viewers by invoking a series of emotions that result from showing images that connect their hearts and their brains with products/ services. That is the best concept of engagement any marketer could ever reach.

And finally, if you are still not convinced as a marketer, think as an advertiser: videos push up sales, online video ads are predicted to be the biggest share of advertising budget in the next year, the market is boiling hot and will be more, there are new technologies every day, unique formats developed especially for the web, a world of possibilities that should not be wasted. It’s just a matter of trying. And timing.

2 comments:

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